Over the weekend, as commentators Chelsea Handler and Tomi Lahren engaged in a political debate, a comment by the latter unwittingly pointed to one of the singular problems of Obamacare. When Handler asked what health plan she belonged to, Lahren responded, “Luckily I am 24 so I am still on my parents’…” Cue sarcastic laughter from the crowd.
The liberal audience in Pasadena mocked Lahren for her hypocrisy—attacking Obamacare while benefiting from it by staying on her parents’ health insurance—but they weren’t wrong in their criticism. While Lahren rightly pointed out that Obamacare “fails the very people that it’s intended to help,” if she wants to know the root cause of that failure, she should look in the mirror.
The Slacker Mandate Is Aptly Named
One report on the incident claimed that “extending insurance to older ‘dependents’ is not typically targeted by conservatives who criticize Obamacare.” In reality, though, conservatives have targeted this mandate—for instance, the paper released in 2012, while I worked for the Senate Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee. It noted that mandates such as the under-26 provision raise premiums by a minimum of several hundred dollars per year, and that proposals to provide health insurance to 20-something “dependents” like Mark Zuckerberg (then 28) would create definite costs to achieve questionable benefits.
Since then, the case against this particular mandate has only increased. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper released last year found a significant economic impact: “We find evidence that employees who were most affected by the mandate, namely employees at large firms, saw wage reductions of approximately $1,200 per year. These reductions appear to be concentrated among workers whose employers offer employer-sponsored health insurance; however, they do not seem to be only borne by parents of eligible children or parents more generally.”
As the Wall Street Journal noted last year, the paper made clear that “no alleged government benefit is free and people should be allowed to make the trade-offs for themselves.” Apparently, however, alleged “conservative” Lahren believes otherwise.
The Tomi Lahren Case Study
Lahren’s comments provide a perfect case study against the under-26 mandate, in two respects. First, the “dependent” mandate has few statutory limits—whether income, lack of access to employer coverage, or both. That a pundit like Lahren can hold lucrative media contracts while remaining on her parents’ health coverage speaks to the absurdity of Obamacare’s definition of “dependent.”
Second, it proves Lahren’s criticism of Obamacare that the law “fails the very people it’s intended to help.” Because Lahren refuses to buy her own insurance plan, she raises premiums 1) for her parents’ co-workers, who have to pay for Lahren’s health costs as part of their coverage and 2) on insurance exchanges, where individuals are older and costlier than average precisely because many young adults remain on their parents’ policies.
With upper-middle-class households largely obtaining coverage through employers, and households of more modest means going through exchanges instead, the under-26 mandate represents a sizable transfer of wealth from the working class—who pay higher premiums—to the affluent—who gain the benefit of “free” coverage for their children. So Lahren is correct that Obamacare “fails the very people it’s intended to help”—because of people like her, who grab government “benefits” irrespective of the other individuals those “benefits” harm.
The end of the 2012 Joint Economic Committee paper noted that “a welfare state administered by the private sector, yet mandated by government, remains a welfare state at its core.” If Lahren wants to help the people Obamacare hurts, or even if she just wants to adhere to the conservative political beliefs she purports to follow, then perhaps she should use the coming weeks to explore her own health insurance options, rather than remaining part of the Obamacare welfare state she claims to abhor yet perpetuates.
